Sword and Shield: The Sum of Their Parts
by Hedi Dracona
Summary: Can two very broken people help each other mend? Even if they do, how far will their twin quests for vengeance go in the process? AU starting at a bit before the Itachi Pursuit arc and partway into the Chimera Ant arc. Eventual Sasuke/Kurapika
1. Prologue: Sweet Dream

Mamiya took a step back to admire the great stone arch she and Asuka had just conjured in the middle of the clearing. Yes, this would do very nicely. A jutsu of this magnitude needed an appropriate focus, after all. She brushed the sweat off of her forehead with her sleeve. "Looks good."

Asuka frowned. "It could be prettier."

"It doesn't need to be pretty as long as it gets the job done," Ichirou said, walking over to it with a tape measure, a large ruler, and a string with an iron stake on each end. He measured out and marked on the ground where the exact centre was, then drove one stake straight down into the point with his foot. He shortened the string to the appropriate length with a knot on the bight, and then used the second stake to carve a perfect circle into the flattened ground, just big enough to touch the inside edges of the arch's sides. Then, he shortened the string again, measured it, undid the knot, tied it again, measured it again, and, this time satisfied, made a smaller, concentric circle, three-fourths the diameter of the first one. He removed the stake in the ground, drew lines to split the inner circle into fourths, and then began carefully carving out a different delicate pattern of curves in each quadrant. Once _that_ painstaking work was done, he left the circle and rest against one of the trees. Akiko hurried over to offer him a canteen, and he drank greedily from it.

"The next part's going to be the trickiest," Emi said, wringing her hands.

"Don't worry," Ryou said, and gave her a dazzling grin. "The conditions you came up with are ironclad. All I have to do is write them, right, Ichirou?"

"That's right," Ichirou said. "Just be careful not to step on any of the lines."

Ryou nodded, and, facing the circle, performed a genjutsu on himself. He could now see a perfect Archemedian spiral going through the outer circle until it reached the inner one, and, written clearly along it starting from the outer edge, the exact conditions that Emi had written. All that was left was to trace the writing, and he began to do so, working backwards and upside-down from the end to avoid hemming himself in and potentially disrupting any of his own or Ichirou's work.

_Make a door to a world such as shall be described herein: A world inhabitable by humans. A world that is rich and bountiful. A world that speaks the same tongue we do. A world whose native peoples cannot use chakra. A world where power can conquer all. Make the door, open the door, and let it never close. Make the door, open the door, and let it never close. Make the door, open the door, and let it never close._

It had taken him hours, but, finally, Ryou's work was done. He formed a hand seal and released the genjutsu, returning his vision to normal. "Akiko, Kazuo, it's ready."

The siblings nodded in unison, and Ryou moved away from the circle so they could do their work. They stood side by side, Akiko's left hand and Kazuo's right meeting between them, palms facing and fingers intertwined. Kazuo's hand all but engulfed his younger sister's. Chakra began to flow freely between them, and they activated their bloodline limit.

A thin trail of blood pulled itself out of each of their mouths, moving like something solid and alive. The trails met in the air, and then branched off in opposite directions, quickly forming another circle a few feet above the other one and brushing up against the stone without staining it. Once the circle was complete, lines of blood began branching inward, inscribing a regular heptagon within the circle, followed by both types of regular heptagram, one after the other. At each point, a smaller circle began to radiate out until they were large enough that even one of Ichirou's hands could fit inside it comfortably. The secondary seal circle complete, Akiko squeezed her brother's hand slightly and they started to carefully lower it down. The blood soaked into the ground, and the two lines still connecting it to Kazuo and Akiko's mouths detached and slithered back into their throats. Almost immediately, the blood in the ground began to turn brown, and then black, and the ground began to harden.

"It's done," Kazuo said. He and Akiko exchanged a grin.

"We're gonna be kings and queens!" Akiko cheered as she skipped over to one of the circled points. She crouched down and put her right hand on it. Kazuo, much more calmly, walked over to the one adjacent to her and followed suit. Mamiya, Ichirou, Ryou, Emi, and Asuka each found a point and did the same.

"On my count," Mamiya said. "One. . . two. . . _three!_"

"_Kinjutsu: Seikai no Hashi!_" Seven voices rang out through the trees for the last time.


	2. Chapter 1: Placing the Pieces

"Thank you for taking the time to see me, Mr. Nostrad."

"The pleasure's all mine. Would you like something to drink?"

"Just water, thank you."

"What is it you wanted to talk about?"

"Well, as you know, I like to surround myself with beautiful things. Something of yours in particular caught my eye."

". . . What do you mean?"

"That blond young man that served as your bodyguard at that dinner last week. . . I'd like to buy him from you."

"His contract –"

"I don't think you understand, Mr. Nostrad. I don't want to buy his _contract_ from you. I'd like to buy _him._"

". . . You realise what you're asking me to do here. I'd be betraying the trust of one of my best employees, all for –"

"Would two trillion jenni be enough?"

"T-two trillion?"

"As soon as I looked into his eyes, I knew I had to have him. Money is not an object."

". . . I don't know."

"Then what about three trillion?"

There was a long silence.

". . . Alright, you have a deal. . . but I can't just hand him over to you when he comes in for work tomorrow. It'll have to happen somewhere far away from the eyes of the Community."

"I think I know just the place."

-o-

"Where are _you_ going?" Kabuto asked as Sasuke passed him in the hall, evidently on his way out of the hideout they were in.

"A walk," Sasuke said, not slowing for a moment.

Kabuto turned to call after him. "You know that a strange rift to another place sprung up in the forest last week, right? It might be dangerous out there. Who knows what might have come through?"

Sasuke scoffed. "Nothing I can't handle."

If Kabuto had a reply to that, Sasuke didn't hear it. He'd already sped up enough to be far down the hall and around a corner, before the medic-nin had a chance to worsen his mood further.

-o-

Kurapika stood in front of the stone archway that he'd been told to investigate. It was wide and tall enough to fit a horsedrawn cart of moderate size. He couldn't see any of the seven corpses that he'd heard were supposed to be on the other side, and it looked like the "spell circle" mentioned in the reports had already been trampled. One thing that was very consistent with the report, though, was that the trees in the forest on the other side were not only completely different from the trees in the forest he was currently standing in, but not of _any_ species he could identify. Not wanting to actually risk getting too close just yet, he kicked a rock towards the opening; it skittered through to the other side unharmed.

He paced around to the other side. Only ominous, inky blackness could be seen through it from the back. He decided to back up a good deal further from it before repeating the same experiment he'd tried with the front. The rock bounced off this time, as if it had hit a solid wall, but nothing else happened. Prodding it further with a stick yielded similar results. Finally rapping on it lightly with his knuckles, Kurapika was unsettled by the lack of noise it made, but whatever the material was, he was fairly sure nothing was going to be getting through the gate from this side. Only one thing left to do, then.

Kurapika went back around to the front, and cautiously reached out his hand toward that strange forest on the other side. As soon as his fingertips started to enter the space under the archway, the air began to hum and his skin tingled with static. He immediately pulled back and inspected his hand for any injuries or numbness, but it seemed fine.

It was almost too late before he noticed a hand brush against his neck. He immediately sprung forward, without heed to the hair-raising energy that washed past him and receded as he moved through the archway, and a glance behind him confirmed that there was a greasy, but well-dressed man holding a heavy-looking leather collar now calmly striding through the archway after him. How had he not sensed that man's presence sooner?

At least five other presences spread out ahead of him began to move. He couldn't see them yet, and their auras were very well-hidden, but their movements were slow, clumsy, and, to a trained ear, more than loud enough. This was clearly an ambush, but by whom?

As the first of his additional pursuers came into view, Kurapika took note of both the collar around the woman's neck and the blank, glassy-eyed expression on her face. It was easy enough to knock her out, manoeuvre around her as she fell, and keep running, but he could hear even more starting to move and give chase.

"Kurapika," a man's voice – presumably belonging to the man who'd snuck up on him – drifted lazily through the trees, "it's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. Slow down."

The man's reassurances only prompted Kurapika to run faster.


	3. Chapter 2: Fateful Encounters

Sasuke heard the sound of someone crashing through the underbrush, and the rustle of multiple pursuers. He immediately took to the trees, and, both curious and utterly confident, headed towards the noise. It took minimal effort to get ahead of them – whomever was being chased was fast. . . compared to somebody who wasn't Sasuke – and it was only a few seconds before a blond ran into view, eyes wide and. . . glowing red?

That detail alone was enough to make Sasuke want to get a closer look. He timed his jump carefully; he landed in front of the blond just a moment too late for them to avoid colliding with his chest, and, with less time than it would take to blink, spirited them back up into the tree he'd been perched in, to examine those interesting red eyes without being interrupted by a hunting party.

Easier said than done, since the blond recovered from the shock surprisingly quickly, and started fighting back nearly as soon as Sasuke's feet made contact with the wide tree limb. Almost automatically, Sasuke buried a hand in the person's hair and jerked their head back so he could force eye contact. This was the point where he first noticed that something was wrong.

"Let me go!" the blond shouted, noticeably _not_ paralysed by the genjutsu Sasuke had attempted to use, and reached back to grab Sasuke's wrist.

Sasuke responded by giving the blond a good shake and a small zap of electricity to stun them. "Shut up. Do you _want_ them to find you?"

"You're. . . you're not with them?" they asked, looking him dead in the eye, and it registered in Sasuke's head this time that he was staring into the most beautiful shade of red he'd ever seen.

It was a second later that Sasuke realised that it was, in fact, a very familiar hue – he'd seen it in fire many times before – but there was something about those eyes that rendered looking at them more appealing than the colour itself could account for. Was it part of the blond's aura? They didn't seem to have any chakra coils or analogous internal stores of energy, but bits of the external aura that _was_ visible seemed to curl and twist and very slightly wilt, almost like it was ablaze with some sort of great fire that even the Sharingan couldn't see directly. There had been little skin contact while Sasuke manhandled the blond, since no part of them from the neck down but hands and ankles was exposed, but Sasuke wouldn't be surprised if their entire body felt like it was burning with fever, rather than only the back of their neck.

Either this was some sort of bloodline limit, or Sasuke had caught an elemental avatar of fire. He wasn't sure which.

"Well?" the blond asked again, growing impatient. Something about their eyes changed; not only were they bizarrely beautiful, but now there was a tiny inkling of terror scrabbling around at the back of Sasuke's mind, although it was easily squashed. "Answer me."

"I'm not with the group that's chasing you," Sasuke said honestly.

"You're telling the truth. . ." the blond murmured, almost to themselves, and their eyes softened. The little itching terror faded.

"Why are they chasing you?" Sasuke asked.

The blond looked upset. "The Hunters' Association betrayed me. They decided my eyes are more important to them than my membership."

That hit a chord with Sasuke, although he didn't know what the Hunters' Association was. "I know what it's like to have special eyes."

"Then you should know why he isn't safe," a third voice called up from below them. Sasuke glanced down, and saw a greasy-looking man – a greasy-looking, definitively human man, who nonetheless also seemed to lack chakra coils – standing under the tree, holding some sort of collar. He was followed by a man and a woman, both glassy-eyed and looking like they were waiting for orders. "Rare and precious creatures like him are always under threat by poachers. It took me nearly two years, but I've finally received authorisation to take the last known Kuruta into my protective custody."

"I can take care of myself!" the blond yelled back.

The greasy man only laughed. "They all say that at first." He idly ran his fingers over the collar's edge. Sasuke noted that the object was charged with the man's chakra, and that the two people with him were wearing identical collars, similarly charged. "I'm sure you'll change your mind. They always do. Soon you'll even be eating out of my hand."

Bile rose in Sasuke's throat, and he subconsciously tried to pull the blond closer, but he wouldn't budge an inch. "You'll have to go through me, first."

A vile smirk twisted its way onto the greasy man's face. "I wasn't expecting a two-for-one deal, but I'm sure I can accommodate." The two collared people started slowly moving towards the tree Sasuke was in.

"If he gets the collar on you, it's all over," the blond whispered.

Sasuke nodded, but he didn't intend to let the greasy man get close enough to have a chance. He caught the man's gaze, just for a moment.

Then it really _was_ all over. The two collared people collapsed, and the greasy man himself stood perfectly still. . . at least until Sasuke sent 1,500 amperes of electricity straight through his heart.

"Is. . . is he dead?" the blond asked, eyeing the body warily.

"Only one way to be sure," Sasuke answered, and flitted down to the ground long enough to slit the man's throat from ear to ear. He flicked the blood off his sword and sheathed it before walking over to the fallen woman and nudging her with his foot. There was no response. He knelt down and, very carefully, used the end of a kunai to unbuckle and then remove the collar without having to actually touch it.

Almost immediately, the woman's eyes lit up as if she'd woken from a trance, and she blinked up at him in confusion. "What. . . ?"

"You're free now," Sasuke told her.

"Wh-what about the others?" she mumbled, slowly dragging herself into a sitting position and holding her head.

Sasuke shrugged and got to his feet. "I don't know, but the man that was controlling you is dead. If you're worried, you should probably go back and free them on your own."

The woman nodded, gingerly got to her feet, and hurried over to get the collar off of her comrade. A relieved smile crossed her face as he rejoined the world of the waking. She looked over her shoulder at Sasuke. "Thank you."

Sasuke didn't answer; he just flit back up to the branch he'd previously been on. Almost as soon as he did so, the blond's fist came hurtling into his face. He leapt backwards just in time to avoid a broken nose, landing in the next tree over. "Ow! What the _hell_ was that for?"

"That was completely reckless!" the blond snapped at him. "Killing that man could have done the same to all of the potentially innocent people he had under his control, or sent them into permanent comas, which is just as bad. It was pure luck that you're only responsible for one death here."

"And that's a reason to punch me in the face?" Sasuke asked, incredulous. Both of those possibilities seemed incredibly unlikely to him.

"_Yes!_"

"Look, even if they _had_ died, my killing that guy was in defense of myself _and_ you. You could at least _act_ grateful."

The blond stopped meeting his eyes, and shifted uncomfortably. "My safety's not worth that much."

"If you say so. . . ." Sasuke decided to start asking questions. "What's a Kuruta?"

The blond glanced up nervously. "It's the name of my clan. Why?"

"He mentioned that you're the last one, as well as something about poachers," Sasuke pointed out, but the word "poachers" only succeeded in setting the blond _more_ on-edge. ". . . Look, I know you probably won't believe this –"

"_I'll_ decide what I do or do not believe," the blond interrupted, suddenly looking him in the eye again, "so just say it."

Sasuke was unused to people deliberately making eye contact with him, but continued. ". . . I'm the last of my clan, too."

"That's very close to the truth. . . but you're still lying," the blond said. "Who are the others?"

The accuracy of the blond's assessment made Sasuke grit his teeth. Was this also part of a bloodline limit? If it was, it'd be better to just come clean. "One of them is my brother. The other might or might not exist. They're the ones who slaughtered the rest of us, and I plan to kill them for it."

That last sentence seemed to have an unusual effect on the blond. "We're. . . more alike than I thought, although my clan's butchers were outsiders. I've. . . already killed two of them. . . but there are potentially eleven more to go."

Sasuke noted the pained expression on the blond's face as he admitted to having killed two people, even though they'd surely deserved it. This person was obviously not cut out to be a killer at all, but had the potential to be quite useful despite that. "Eleven, huh? You sound like you could use some help."

"I don't need your charity," the blond said through grit teeth.

"I don't _give_ charity," Sasuke replied, "but you obviously have some skills, even if you're squeamish about finishing the job. If you can be useful to me, I'd be willing to be useful to you."

"How will you determine if I 'can be useful to' y–" the blond suddenly had to move quickly to dodge a punch. The followup kick landed, but it felt to Sasuke like he might as well have just kicked a steel bar rather than another person's leg; his own shin was now throbbing painfully, and the blond's hadn't budged at all.

Sasuke ducked as a chain with a round weight on the end suddenly appeared from the blond's sleeve and swung at him. He aimed two shuriken around the chain – one going above, one below – but rather than being forced to try blocking one or the other, the chain moved like it was something alive, tangling both projectiles in midair between its links before letting them fall harmlessly to the ground.

"You'll have to be faster than that," the blond said, lunging forward and flicking his wrist to send the chain flying at him again.

Sasuke dodged to the side, and _should_ have cleared the chain by a few centimetres, but, somehow, it struck him anyway, and with enough force to crack at least one rib. He grabbed the chain with one hand while he still had the chance, though, and sent a jolt of electricity up it. The reaction was not what he'd expected: There was a hiss of pain, sure, but a split-second later the chain literally vanished from between his fingers, and a second, identical one sprung forward. That was when Sasuke realised what the chain actually was. "That thing's made of your chakra, isn't it?"

"Chakra, huh?" the blond asked, swinging the chain again. "Is that what they call it here?"

Sasuke ducked under it this time, and threw three kunai back. "What do they call it where you're from?"

"Nen," the blond answered, dodging two, but getting hit on the arm by the third. The damage was completely superficial, though; not only did he catch the kunai as it fell away from the tiny hole it had made in his sleeve without drawing blood, but he threw it back at Sasuke easily.

As Sasuke moved out of the way of the counterattack, he contemplated two things: First, the blond's "nen" had shifted automatically to gather where the kunai would hit, somehow cushioning the impact down to almost nothing, and, secondly, his eyes had turned an ordinary shade of blue, which had brought with it a drastic stabilisation of his aura. The only thing left of the fiery wraith he'd initially met was the persistent lack of an apparent internal chakra/"nen" structure.

The sudden probability that this person was human was a relief, but the shifting aura shield would nonetheless hamper any attempt to deal physical damage. He'd proven twice that lightning could get past it, but he wondered if maybe he could outrun it, too. "I don't think I caught your name. I'm Sasuke Uchiha." He drew a kunai and lunged.

The blond twisted out of the way, and delivered a kick across Sasuke's back that sent him flying down towards another branch, which caught him in the gut before he had a chance to register anything but pain. "My name is Kurapika. I'm of the Kuruta clan, but have no particular surname. Why aren't you guarding yourself? That kick could have left you paralysed for life if I hadn't noticed and held back at the last second!" 

"Well, Kurapika of Kuruta," Sasuke wheezed once he could suck in enough air to talk again. "How do you propose I do that? It's not like I can train my spine to be tougher."

". . . You don't know how to use gyou?" Kurapika asked, puzzled.

Sasuke carefully, gingerly pulled himself up onto the branch he was hanging from and sat down, gritting his teeth at the jolt of pain that shot up his spine from the action. Needless to say, he did not want to repeat the experience of being nearly snapped in half twice in quick succession. "How to use _what?_"

"Gyou. You know, when you focus your. . . aura, I suppose. . . around a certain part of your body to make it stronger."

"Even with expert chakra control, it can't make _that_ much difference," Sasuke said, still trying to catch his breath and clutching his abdomen in pain. He was probably bleeding internally. This suspicion was confirmed when he coughed and a good deal of blood came out of his mouth.

Suddenly Kurapika's eyes and aura were ablaze again, and a different chain appeared: the weight on the end was cross-shaped, and it was attached to the ring on his thumb rather than the one on his ring finger. It was surrounded by a soft, blue-green glow, seeming almost entirely separate from the smouldering purple-pink it had been borne from. "Here, let me heal you." Kurapika jumped down to a branch that was about level with the one Sasuke was on. "Hold still."

Sasuke watched in fascination as the chain, moving on its own, slithered over to him and the strange metal cross hovered parallel to his skin. The strange sensation of blood being pulled back into ruptured vessels, of flesh and organs pulling themselves back together, and of bone fragments setting themselves washed over him, as what would have been weeks or months of healing were compressed into only a few seconds. "Even Naruto doesn't heal this fast. . ." he murmured, pain already fading.

"Who's Naruto?" Kurapika asked.

". . . Someone who used to be my friend," Sasuke said eventually. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Then I won't ask further." The cross moved behind Sasuke to heal his cracked spine and shattered ribs, then to his side to heal his cracked rib from earlier, and then retreated far enough to be able to go and heal his bruising shin, too.

"I'm starting to think that nen and chakra might not be as similar as we thought," Sasuke said when Kurapika was done, stretching a little and finding that he was completely healed. He was used to there being at least some downtime to recover from such serious injuries.

It was a second later that he had to dive to catch Kurapika, who had suddenly keeled over in a dead faint.


	4. Chapter 3: Fever Dreams

Kabuto adjusted his glasses and made some notes on the clipboard he was carrying. "Well, the medicines and jutsus I've tried have all worked perfectly fine, except against the fever. The only thing to be done for it is to keep switching the cooling blankets as they warm up."

Sasuke nodded. He'd looked at Kurapika's aura earlier, and it had seemed like it had just reached a point where there was nothing left to burn.

"Now. . . are you _sure_ you aren't exaggerating the bit where –"

"He _really did_ nearly snap me in half with one kick, completely by accident. He even scolded me afterwards because he thought I was _trying_ to get killed."

Kabuto sighed and shook his head. "This bodes ill if everyone that comes out of the rift is as strong as you describe."

"I know." On the one hand, Sasuke thought that Kurapika was terrifyingly strong. How could he even come close to defeating Itachi when someone like that, who wasn't even mentally prepared to kill, had defeated him so easily? The fact that he could use Raiton techniques against Kurapika successfully was only a very small comfort; all of his genjutsu and taijutsu were still effectively worthless against him.

On the other hand, Kurapika was just like him. They'd known the same kind of pain. They had the same goal. They both had every reason to need to be strong. He wasn't sure precisely how deep the similarities ran, but he wouldn't have any opportunity to find out until Kurapika woke up.

Soon, Sasuke would have to modify that to "woke up, _and_ was lucid."

It was on the second day that Kurapika first sort of drifted back towards consciousness, if the sporadic episodes of screaming and squirming were anything to go by. It wasn't very long before Kabuto very much believed Sasuke's claim that the blond had managed to nearly snap him in two. Kabuto had made the mistake of grabbing Kurapika's arm during one of the episodes, in an attempt to inject him with something to calm him down. He ended up coming away with three broken ribs from the shove, and a concussion from hitting the wall on the other side of the room.

Kurapika was moved to a soundproofed room after that.

By the fourth day, Kurapika was. . . certainly awake more often, and less likely to lash out when touched, but was still delirious with fever more often than not, and it had not gone down a bit. Sasuke tried his best to explain to him where he was and what was going on, but had the distinct feeling that, half the time, Kurapika didn't even know he was there. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what Kurapika saw when he stared at the spiderweb in one corner of the ceiling, but whatever it was, it made his body keep trying to use the strange eye technique that it really didn't have the resources for, flickering back and forth almost endlessly in obvious distress. Sasuke noticed that he could sometimes successfully use a genjutsu to calm Kurapika down if his eyes were blue at the time, but as soon as they started turning red, the illusion was shattered.

It was during those calm times, though, that Sasuke found it was easiest to get semi-coherent conversation out of Kurapika, and he managed to get a vague idea of what was haunting him. Aside from jumbled strings of apologies and pleading, the most common thing he heard out of Kurapika's mouth was "spider", closely followed by phrases with the word "kill" or "killed" in them – oddly enough, those seemed to happen frequently in conjunction with each other, with the "spider" being alternately the one doing the killing or the one being killed. He also gathered that this spider "only" had ten legs left, and was missing two, but would still be alive as long as it had a head. The phrase "Genei Ryodan" also kept coming up, but asking about that always led back to "spider" and "killed".

It didn't take very long for Sasuke to deduce that the spider Kurapika was talking about was some sort of symbol representing the group of thirteen people responsible for the slaughter of the Kuruta clan, and they were probably called the "Genei Ryodan". He also found himself wanting to comfort Kurapika, since he knew all too well what it was like to have terrifying flashbacks, although it had been years since his were as bad as Kurapika's seemed to be.

The first step was to get a broom and get rid of that spider web in the corner. He would have used a fire jutsu to do it, but that would be bright and flashy and might very well startle Kurapika. Startling Kurapika tended to range from being not a very good idea to being a downright idiotic idea.

"Is that better?" he asked, noticing that Kurapika was watching him. He got a small nod in reply, and smiled. "Good. I'll be right back." He went and put the broom back in its cupboard, then returned. Unfortunately, while he was doing that, Kabuto had arrived with a rolling partition curtain, which meant only one thing.

"Sorry, Sasuke. Patient confidentiality time."

"Fine, fine. . ." Sasuke said, rolling his eyes, and left the room. He leaned against the wall next to the door and stared at the ceiling. Assuming that Kabuto didn't get himself injured, "patient confidentiality time" usually only lasted about five minutes. Sasuke had no idea what the big deal was, though; it was just a change of clothes and a quick checkup.

About five minutes later, Kabuto emerged from the room, taking the rolling partition curtain with him. "You can go back in now."

Sasuke didn't even wait for Kabuto to finish his sentence before pushing past him into the room. Kabuto had actually manged to get Kurapika hooked back up to the IV this time. This meant that Sasuke's conversation with him would probably end up being short; Kabuto usually added a sedative to Kurapika's IV drip, in the hopes of extending the period of time before it inevitably got ripped out again. "Hey there."

Kurapika nodded a little in acknowledgement.

"How are you feeling?"

"Tired. . . ." Kurapika paused for a long moment before speaking up again. "Thank you."

Sasuke gave a little half-smile. "No problem."

"I'm going to fall asleep soon."

"Yes." Sasuke wasn't really sure what other answer to give to that. "Is there anything I can get for you?"

Kurapika shook his head, and moved so he was sitting with his back leaning on the wall his bed had been pushed up against for the sole purpose of letting him sleep sitting up. (It was, in Sasuke's opinion, weird that he'd prefer to sleep that way when there was a perfectly good bed available, but having the bed _away_ from the wall had so far only led Kurapika to abandon it entirely. Perhaps that would change as the fever went down, though.) "Just. . . stay. At least until the darkness comes."

"Alright." He really still wasn't sure what to make of the odd poetic bent Kurapika's speech occasionally took, but the meaning was clear enough. He pulled up a chair, and they sat together in companionable silence for several minutes. As soon as he was certain Kurapika was well and truly asleep, Sasuke very carefully moved him back down onto the mattress, and tucked him in. Even with the ridiculously superhuman strength Kurapika had, sleeping against a hard stone wall when he didn't have to couldn't be good for him.

Meanwhile, Kabuto had just finished administering Orochimaru's pain medicine. "Sasuke's been neglecting his training in favour of watching over that Kurapika girl."

"Oh?" A wry, but pained, smirk crossed Orochimaru's face. "That's unlike him. Do you know why?"

Kabuto shook his head. "He's refused to tell me anything, and questioning the girl only gets me mumblings about spiders and wandering phantoms."

"Any new information about the world on the other side of the rift?"

A troubled look crossed Kabuto's face. "A lot of our men are coming back injured or dead, with strange wounds. The ones who've survived described these devices that make loud noise and bright light, like an explosion, all an instant before a small piece of metal either embeds itself in or goes straight through whatever it's pointed at."

"Question the girl about them as soon as she's capable of explaining anything that doesn't involve spiders or ghosts."

"Of course."


	5. Chapter 4: Revelations

**A/N: I'd like to make a disclaimer here that the Narutoverse isn't exactly the most enlightened world ever, and that the characters' opinions are _not_ my own. I'd also like to apologise for the characters' fail anyway.**

By the fifth day, Kurapika's fever had broken; his temperature was still higher than was healthy, but he was sweating, and he was back on his feet, if still a bit out of it.

"There's something Lord Orochimaru wants you to look at," Kabuto said, pushing his glasses back up as he finished making notes on Kurapika's chart. "Please come with me."

"Can I take a shower first?" Kurapika asked wearily, brushing his sweat-slicked hair off of his forehead with his sleeve.

"It's quite urgent," Kabuto replied. "You may take a shower after we're done."

"Alright. . . ." Kurapika absently let Kabuto lead him out of the room and down the hall, barely noticing when Sasuke – who had been waiting outside the door – silently fell into step behind them.

Kabuto, however, noticed very much. There was obviously something about Kurapika that Sasuke wasn't telling him. It was just a matter of figuring out what. He glanced back at Sasuke and adjusted his glasses again. "Shouldn't you be off training right now?"

"Hm?" Kurapika looked over his shoulder. "Oh. Hello, um. . . Sasuke?"

"Glad to see you remember my name," Sasuke said with a little smirk, utterly ignoring Kabuto. "You aren't _always_ this spacey, are you?"

"No, I. . ." Kurapika trailed off. "I should have been more careful. I'd never actually healed anyone else before; Emission is directly opposed to Materialization, so I –"

Sasuke held up a hand. "Can you. . . start that last part over, but in normal Japanese? I have no idea what you're talking about. It's nen-related jargon, right?"

"Yes. Um. . ." Kurapika paused, trying to think of a way to word it. "Well. . . there's six different types of nen use. I'm naturally aligned with Materialization, which lets me create an object I've had image training with."

"Image training?" Kabuto asked, already taking notes.

Kurapika, reminded of Kabuto's presence, immediately clammed up and gave him a distrustful, almost paranoid look.

"We can talk about it later," Sasuke offered. Kurapika nodded, not taking his eyes of Kabuto.

Eventually, they came to a door with a tiny label on it that read "Morgue 1". Kurapika looked at the label, and furrowed his brow a little.

". . . Why do you want me to look at corpses?" He asked uneasily.

"Some of our agents were killed by something we couldn't identify," Kabuto explained. "Since it probably came from your world, we thought you might be able to tell us what made the strange injury patterns on the bodies."

Kurapika's manner suddenly changed. He was no longer a bedraggled, slightly ill young man who was being dragged around and just wanted to take a shower; he was now a bedraggled, slightly-ill young man surrounded by an air of detached professionalism, who had a job to do, and was not about to let some dead bodies get in the way of his getting to take that shower. Both Sasuke and Kabuto noted the abrupt shift, but neither commented on it.

Kabuto opened the door and held it so Kurapika and Sasuke could go through first, then walked over to a particular table and began to uncover its occupant.

The sheet wasn't even halfway off before Kurapika said: "These are gunshot wounds."

Kabuto noted something down on the clipboard he was still holding. "I see. Can you go into more detail about how these. . . 'gunshots' work?"

Kurapika immediately began rattling off facts about things called "guns" and "bullets". From the way he spoke, Sasuke got the distinct impression that Kurapika was, in fact, reciting memorised passages from a book, rather than giving an explanation of his own. Kabuto, true to form, was taking down every word, but what Kurapika was saying quickly became rather complicated. At Kabuto's suggestion, they relocated to another room where there was a large table and plenty of paper for Kurapika to start drawing diagrams on.

It was nearly half an hour before Kabuto decided he was satisfied with the information he'd gotten, but, at the end of it, he thanked Kurapika and led him to one of the semi-nice rooms, a couple wings away from Sasuke's own room (which was in the "very nice" rooms section). It had its own bathroom, and was prepared with a closet full of very plain white clothes in more-or-less Kurapika's size, a small dresser, a four-poster bed, the messenger bag Kurapika had had with him when he first arrived, and a wooden chair, but it locked from the outside, didn't have a carpet, and was a bit drafty.

"Thank you for the accommodations," Kurapika said, only briefly giving the lock a wary glance, "and for letting me stay."

"Did you think I'd let them just throw you to the wolves out there?" Sasuke asked.

Kabuto almost managed to hide his irritation at Sasuke's words. "Even if you _didn't_ have Sasuke's favour, Lord Orochimaru considers you valuable as a source of information."

"Who's Orochimaru?" Kurapika asked.

Kabuto cleared his throat angrily. "That's _Lord_ Orochimaru. He's one of the most powerful and brilliant ninja in the world, and has discovered the secret of immortality. If you're very lucky, you might get to meet him someday."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Orochimaru's a cranky, bedridden old man. You really don't want to have to meet him."

Kabuto gave Sasuke a disapproving look. "Is that any way to talk about the man who has helped you grow as strong as you are today?"

"You mean the man who's only been giving me power because he wants my body? I'll talk about him however the hell I want." Sasuke noticed Kurapika's eyes widen in abject horror, and then realised how that must have sounded to someone who didn't know about Orochimaru's Living Corpse Reincarnation technique. He then promptly wished he could unthink the mental image that sprung to mind. "N-not like _that!_ It's. . . this thing where he actually has to literally take over a new body every three years."

". . . I'm not sure if that's better or worse," Kurapika said, still wide-eyed.

"Luckily," Kabuto cut in, putting his hand on the door and smiling so politely that it wrapped right back around to giving one a feeling of imminent doom, "_you_ don't need to worry about any of that, Kurapika. Why don't you go take that shower? Sasuke and I need to have a little chat."

Kurapika didn't actually get a chance to respond before Kabuto pushed the door shut, and an only-slightly-ominous _click_ indicated that he was now locked in. He was fairly certain that, were it to become necessary, neither the lock nor the door hinges would stand up to a firm shove. That could, however, be said of most doors and a very large percentage of walls confronted by someone who was able to open the first of the Zaoldyecks' Gates of Trial before they'd even learnt about nen. That said, however, Kurapika wasn't about to go trying anything that might make Kabuto decide to take measures a bit more creative than just putting a locked door between him and the rest of whatever facility they were at. And, just going by the cold chills he got whenever the man smiled, Kurapika was not about to do anything that might cause him to find out just how creative Kabuto was capable of getting.

. . . Hoping to put those thoughts out of his mind, Kurapika entered the bathroom and was relieved to find that had a shower _and_ a tub, so he'd be able to take a nice soak, too.

Half an hour later, Sasuke had finally managed to not only get away from Kabuto and his stupid lecture, but _also_ shove off the related extra chores onto a random underling. Things were going well. He decided to go check on Kurapika – and let him out of his room, since Kabuto wasn't likely to be that charitable. Luckily, during his time in Otogakure, he'd learned to be very good at picking locks, so the fact he didn't actually have the key wasn't an issue.

"Hey," he said as he opened the door. "How –"

"Get out! GET. OUT."

"I'm sorry," Sasuke said, averting his eyes and catching the damp towel Kurapika had thrown at his head. "I-I didn't know you were a girl."

"I'm not! Get _out!_" There was a thud as Kurapika hastened a little too quickly to get his("her", as far as Sasuke was now concerned) other leg into a pair of boxers and fell backwards onto his("her"?) rump.

Sasuke was silent for a long moment. "Well, I was _about_ to leave, and then you went and said something so obviously false that I want to know why you'd bother to lie about it."

Kurapika finished pulling on the shorts, and was fetching a shirt from the closet when he("she", Sasuke's brain said) answered. "It. . . would probably take a while to explain."

"I have time."

Once Kurapika was dressed – and Sasuke could look without threat of getting punched in the face – they sat down across from each other; Sasuke took the lone chair, while Kurapika perched on the edge of the bed, searching for the best words to explain with.

". . . First of all, do the words 'gender identity' mean anything to you?"

"Not together like that, no," Sasuke said. "Is this a nen thing?"

A small laugh bubbled past Kurapika's lips before he could stifle it. "No, it has nothing to do with nen. It has more to do with neurology than anything else. A human fetus normally develops into male or female depending on exposure to masculinising or feminising hormones. These determine –"

"I know how sexual dimorphism in humans works," Sasuke interrupted, lacing his fingers together.

Kurapika smiled. "Okay. What happens when a fetus's developing brain gets exposed to masculinising hormones, but the rest of the body doesn't?"

After a moment of thought, Sasuke's eyes lit up in understanding. "So it's like being born stuck in Se– in a Henge no Jutsu of a girl."

Now it was Kurapika's turn to look confused. "Well, if 'Henge no Jutsu' is what the name sounds like, then. . . yes, I think?"

"It's a general-purpose way of changing one's appearance. There's actually an idiot from my home village whose signature variation on it is turning into a female version of himself." After that conversation, there was no way Sasuke was going to mention _any_ of the other details of Naruto's Sexy no Jutsu.

". . . First: Yes, that analogy works. Second: It's okay, I don't think I want to know."

Sasuke sat up a little straighter. He _knew_ he wasn't that bad a liar. "How do you do that?"

"I'm actually not really sure," Kurapika replied. " I do know that I'm better at it when I'm using the Scarlet Eyes."

"Is that what your clan's doujutsu is called?" Sasuke asked.

"I wouldn't call the Scarlet Eyes themselves a 'technique'. . . . They're just a recessive trait that shows itself when we feel strong emotions like anger or excitement. There are abilities _associated_ with them, but the eyes alone are just a body part that people buy and sell like gemstones." As he spoke, Kurapika's eyes changed color.

"What." The very idea of treating someone's eyes as gemstones made absolutely no sense to Sasuke. "_Why?_"

"If we die when our eyes are red, they remain that way permanently," Kurapika said, lowering his voice to a whisper. "You'd be surprised by what lengths people will go to, to get to look at 'the most beautiful shade of red in the world' whenever they want. That's part of why we hid, and made our village far away from anyone else. . . but then the Ryodan found us despite that."

A sick feeling settled in Sasuke's stomach again. Suddenly, the reason why the greasy man had chosen to use the word "poacher" became very clear. The Sharingan, at least, was powerful and feared enough that the Uchiha clan had always been able to live openly. He couldn't imagine what it must be like to live in constant fear of being discovered and hunted down like an animal. That was when he made a decision. "My offer still stands, you know."

Kurapika looked confused. "What offer?"

"If you help me with my revenge, I'll help you with yours." It wasn't exactly what he'd said earlier, but Sasuke felt it was close enough. The question of whether or not Kurapika could be useful to him had already been answered with a resounding "yes".

There was a long pause before Kurapika answered. ". . . I'm going to have to think about it for a while. This isn't a decision I can make on the spur of the moment like this."

Sasuke nodded. "That's okay." He stood up. "I'll come back later, then. . . and I'll remember to knock next time."

"Thanks," Kurapika said as Sasuke headed towards the door. "Um. . . if it isn't too much trouble, could you also bring some books with you next time?"

"I'll try. There's not really much to read around here." Sasuke paused before he closed the door behind him all the way. "Would you rather I leave the door unlocked for you?"

Kurapika shook his head. "I don't want to get either of us in trouble with Kabuto."

Sasuke nodded, then closed the door and started working on locking it again, when he noticed a certain presence approaching.

"Breaking into other people's rooms, are we?" Kabuto asked cheerfully. "You could have just asked me for the key, you know."

Sasuke glared, and squirrelled his lockpicks back into his sleeve with a swift motion. He didn't say anything as he righted himself and started walking away.

Kabuto tried the doorknob, and found that it turned easily. "Trying to cover your tracks, then." He produced a key and locked the door before he started walking again, using his longer legs to easily catch up with Sasuke. "So, what did you two talk about?"

"It's none of your business," Sasuke said. "Stop following me."

"I'm not following you," Kabuto said. "I'm just walking in the same direction."

"Suuuure you are." Sasuke rolled his eyes. They spent the next minute or so in silence, before something suddenly occurred to him. "You knew the entire time, didn't you?"

"Knew what, Sasuke?" Kabuto asked.

"About Kurapika."

"You'll need to be more specific than that," Kabuto said, but with a knowing grin.

Sasuke's cheeks turned a little red, and he glared. "Y-you know what I mean. About him being. . . well. . ."

"Ah, you found out about _that,_" Kabuto said, pushing his glasses back up his nose, still grinning. "_That_ became readily apparent as soon as I had to strip 'him' down so the cooling blankets would work."

". . . You could have just _told_ me, instead of pulling that bullshit about 'patient confidentiality'," Sasuke complained.

"But it _was_ about patient confidentiality, Sasuke," Kabuto said, grin settling into a smirk. "I mean, what kind of doctor would I be if I'd told you that instead of letting you find it out for yourself later?"

". . . What are you talking about?" Sasuke asked, feeling confused for what was already thrice too many times that day.

Kabuto's smirk widened. "Well, she _was_ unconscious, at least at first, and you _were_ spending an awful lot of time in her room. . . alone. . . sometimes practising genjutsu on her. . ."

Sasuke's face grew progressively redder as Kabuto hit each ellipsis. "What the hell kind of pervert do you think I am?" he demanded.

"I dunno. You either hide your stash _really_ well, or don't have one." Kabuto winked, and started turning a corner that would lead him away from Sasuke's current path. "But either way, you gotta admit she's pretty cute. . . for a flat tomboy, at least."

Sasuke wasn't sure whether or not it would be worth it to take a detour for the sake of punching Kabuto, but he decided not to. The mention of Kurapika being "pretty cute" brought back to mind that tiny glimpse he'd gotten of Kurapika. . . naked. . . and that, in turn, led to something that he'd rather take care of by himself, and as soon as possible.

He hastened down the hallway back to his room.


	6. Chapter 5: A Testing of Strength

**A/N: This is the last of the chapters I had saved up before I started publishing this. My muse is being uncooperative at moving chapter six along, but I do know where I want to go with this. It's just going to take a while to get there. Words of encouragement are always appreciated, but never demanded. Additionally, I made a slip-up when I said that this starts partway through the Greed Island arc; I'd forgotten in the midst of all my outlining that I'd planned for the approval of the Greasy Man's plan to have occurred while Netero was away dealing with the Chimera Ants.**

**Also, since this was written back during the hiatus before the conclusion of the Chimera Ants arc, and thus before Pariston and the others were actually introduced or Netero's will revealed, things are probably going to end up going even more AU than I'd initially intended. Sorry about that. I hope you'll all bear with me.  
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The next day, Kabuto gave Kurapika a clean bill of health, and he was allowed to go to the training field. Sasuke was already there, throwing shuriken at a target twenty metres away, at speeds that Kurapika couldn't even start follow with his eyes.

"Is everyone from your world that fast?" Kurapika asked once Sasuke ran out of shuriken and had to stop to collect them again.

Sasuke scoffed. "Of course not. Is everyone from _your_ world as strong as you are?"

Kurapika shook his head. "No. . . but there are still plenty who are stronger."

Sasuke nearly dropped the shuriken he was picking up. "You. . . just mean overall strength, right? Not physical?"

Kurapika shook his head. "No. My eyes and the fact I've done weight training give me a bit of an edge, but it's still nothing compared to what can be accomplished by someone born under Reinforcement."

Sasuke grit his teeth at that. He still didn't understand the jargon Kurapika was using, but the meaning was clear enough: He had even further to catch up than he'd previously thought. He continued gathering up his shuriken in silence.

"Will anyone mind if some of these training posts get damaged?" Kurapika asked suddenly.

Sasuke looked up. "No, I break them all the time. Why?" He was absolutely certain that the posts were not sturdy enough to hold up to even a single kick from Kurapika.

Kurapika didn't answer. He was instead standing very still, facing a training post with his eyes closed. Sasuke surreptitiously activated his Sharingan to get a better look, and his suspicion that Kurapika was doing something with only his aura was confirmed. The very air suddenly began to hum, and – going by the surprised squawks from some genin training on the other end of the field – Kurapika's aura had just become visible to normal eyes. Then it suddenly flared out in all directions, flattening the grass around his feet and sending a small spray of dust into the air, before dying back down. The humming stopped, and his aura fell out of the normally-visible spectrum again.

Sasuke finished gathering his shuriken, and watched as Kurapika's nen flowed towards his right hand and began to compress itself into something solid and dense, creating metal from only aura and will. Now that he really had a good look at it, Sasuke noticed that, even aside from the chains, nen seemed a lot more dense overall than chakra was. Perhaps it was that quality that let it block physical blows so easily?

He also noticed that it seemed like everything Kurapika was doing with nen happened externally. There _was_ a strange, looping mass of nen in the area of his heart – a Byakugan would have been able to give more detail there – but it seemed to be static, and it certainly wasn't producing anything; nen production didn't look like it was centralised at all, but that was all he could really tell.

There was a slight rattle of chains before, swift enough that Sasuke was surprised, the chain with the round weight shot forward and began snaking its way around the training post until there were five evenly-spaced points it was doubled up around. Then, without Kurapika moving, the chain suddenly began to constrict. The wood compressed at the doubled points, then splintered, and then simply began to crumble as it was pulverised. The chain worked with great and precise enough force that, as it retreated, its work done, the sections of wood that had been between the doubled points clattered to the ground intact.

Kurapika smiled a little. He wasn't impressed by his own work, but he was satisfied by it, and relieved. He didn't proceed to do the same to any other posts, however.

"What was the purpose of that exercise?" Sasuke asked.

"Just making sure that everything's still in working order," Kurapika said quietly, flexing the fingers on his chain-covered hand. "The man who taught me nen said that, since the long-term effects overusing the Scarlet Eyes are entirely undocumented, I always need to check myself for damage after recovering from a burn-out like that, especially if it knocks me out for more than a few hours." He didn't want to admit it, but he'd never been out of it for quite as long as he'd just had from overusing his eyes, and this was very concerning to him.

Sasuke looked surprised. "Your clan didn't teach you about that? It seems like an important detail to leave out."

Kurapika shook his head, seeming to find the grass _incredibly_ interesting. "I didn't even know nen existed until years after my clan died. There was probably some secret test one had to pass to be allowed to know, and I don't think the elder would have wanted me to learn to fight properly in the first place."

"Why not?"

"Probably a combination of my having been too young and too prone to losing myself in the flames of rage." Kurapika gently ran a fingertip along one of the conjured rings. "He'd have had a point."

"You obviously know how to fight now, though. Where did you learn it?"

". . . Does it really matter?" Kurapika asked.

"No, I was just wondering." In reality, Sasuke wanted to know what kind of training Kurapika had on the off chance he could gain an edge by doing the same thing. The fact that Kurapika didn't want to share was incredibly irritating.

"That's not what your eyes say," Kurapika told him. "What is it you _really_ want to know?"

Sasuke was deeply unsettled by how easily Kurapika could read him. Even if it was part of Kurapika's special abilities to distinguish truth from falsehoods, he hated the idea that he was so transparent. ". . . I want to learn nen."

That gave Kurapika pause. "I. . . really have no idea if something like that's _possible._ I mean, you already have chakra, don't you?"

"We won't know if it's possible unless we try," Sasuke said. He wasn't willing to give up on this so easily.

"True. . . ." Kurapika considered it for a long moment. "If it _is_ possible to use both, I'd like to learn what I can of chakra, too."

"Deal."

Kurapika glanced nervously over at the genin on the other end of the field. "Can we relocate to somewhere a bit more private?"

"Sure." Sasuke wasn't sure why Kurapika felt the need to be so secretive, but he wasn't about to argue about it. He led the way to a meeting room that was quite dusty from disuse. "This good enough?"

Kurapika nodded, and pulled up a chair at the main table. He started drawing a hexagon in the dust with one finger. "There are six different kinds of nen. . . ."

As he listened to Kurapika's long and comprehensive explanation in patient silence, Sasuke was already starting to see that nen, while powerful, was extremely limited. The rules for it were much more complicated than for chakra, and power was more-or-less inversely proportional to versatility. At the same time, however, it was fuelled by the user's emotions and resolve, rather than being a simple mixture of physical and spiritual energy like chakra was. Surely his hate, his pain, would be enough.

"Any questions?" Kurapika finally asked.

There _was_ a detail that was bothering Sasuke. "You're a Materialization user, right?"

Kurapika nodded.

"Then how were you able to heal me like that? That sort of thing would require a combination of Emission and Reinforcement."

"The true power if the Scarlet Eyes is a Specialization ability called Emperor Time, which lets me use all six types of nen to their full potential," Kurapika said. "However, the full potential of a given type is still restricted by the fact I was born under Materialization. I'll still only ever be forty percent as good at Emission as I am at Materialization, and I'll still be hurt if I'm hit by a master of reinforcement nen using more than sixty percent of their power."

"And because you'd never healed someone else before, you weren't able to gauge how much energy it would cost you," Sasuke said.

"Yes." Kurapika looked away. "I'm sorry for having caused you so much trouble like that."

"Any trouble you might have caused me has been more than made up for," Sasuke said, smirking a little. "You have no idea how satisfying it was to see Kabuto's face the first time you shoved him across the room." He noticed that Kurapika looked a little nervous at the mention of that. "Wait, you're not scared of _Kabuto,_ are you?"

"Whenever he looks at me I feel like I'm in danger of being dissected."

"Oh, that. You get used to that after a while."

Kurapika gave Sasuke an unamused look. "That's easy enough for you to say. _You_ aren't expendable to them. As soon as they get their hands on an encyclopedia or a computer with an internet connection, I'm obsolete. If I'm lucky, they'll look up the Scarlet Eyes before they get rid of me, and, if I'm extremely lucky, I'll be sold to someone instead of killed."

"I'm not going to let them 'get rid of you'," Sasuke said, frowning. "My word has weight around here. I can protect you from Kabuto."

Immediately, it became apparent that he'd said something wrong. Kurapika's shoulders had tensed at the word "protect", and did not seem like they were going to relax again soon. "And what would you have me give you in exchange for your. . . 'protection'?"

"What makes you think I'd make you give me something for it?" Sasuke asked, brow furrowing very slightly. "I already told you I wouldn't let Orochimaru throw you to the wolves. That includes wolves with money, and it includes wolves who are named Kabuto." He stood up, pushing his seat back. "I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?" Kurapika asked, still uneasy.

Sasuke stopped in the doorway, and smiled a little. "To get a cup of water and some leaves."

It wasn't long after Sasuke returned that it became clear to Kurapika that this wasn't going to work. Sasuke's chakra was having absolutely no effect on the water _or_ the leaf.

Sasuke, however, was not ready to give up. He tried to channel more of his anger, more of his hatred, and more of his pain into his effort. . . and that was about the point where the table caught fire. "Dammit!"

"I think it's fairly safe to say that nen and chakra are incompatible," Kurapika said gently as Sasuke jumped back and doused the flames with the water from the cup.

"I'm not ready to give up quite yet," Sasuke said. "Even if nen itself doesn't exist within me, it still might be possible to achieve something similar with chakra."

"Could you explain to me how chakra works?" Kurapika asked. "I don't really understand it very well."

Sasuke sighed, and started mopping up the mess with one of the rags he'd brought on the off chance that he turned out to be a Reinforcement type. "Yeah. We should probably go back to the training field for that one, though." He paused. "By the way, you showed me what happens when you do the test normally, but what happens if you do it when you have Emperor Time activated?"

Kurapika looked queasy at the thought. "I've only tried it once, but. . . the cup I used exploded because it couldn't displace three gallons of human blood fast enough."

Sasuke didn't have a good response to that one, except to be glad that Kurapika was on his side. The notion that Kurapika might ultimately decide _not_ to team up with him didn't even cross his mind.

By the time they'd gotten back to the training field, Sasuke had already explained the basics of chakra theory, so Kurapika was about ready to put it to practice. Sasuke demonstrated the standard clone technique – something that was both very basic and somewhat similar in principle to Materialization nen – being sure to perform the hand seals very slowly. He noticed that, when Kurapika watched him, most of his aura was focused into his eyes. So, that was gyou, then.

"Now, these aren't actually solid," Sasuke explained, "but they take a lot less chakra to make. There's another kind that makes solid clones, but it's very taxing unless you have an unusually large pool of chakra to draw from."

Kurapika first practised on getting the hand seals right before he actually tried to perform the jutsu. He was disappointed, but not surprised, when his first attempt ended in complete failure for anything to occur. "How close was I?"

"You're doing the hand seals right, but the way your aura is flowing is all wrong," Sasuke said. "Your nen doesn't do anything while it's still in your body, so everything that should be happening internally either happens externally or doesn't happen at all."

"Are there any ninjutsu that _don't_ require internal manipulation of chakra?" Kurapika asked.

"Not really. Even without the hand seals, they're all based on the same core principles."

Kurapika sighed in defeat. "If results like that could be accomplished by nen so simply, it would have already been figured out, huh?"

Sasuke nodded, just as disappointed as Kurapika was. "Likewise, if chakra could be used to get the same results as nen. . . they wouldn't bother teaching normal taijutsu anymore, for starters."

". . . I decided I'd like to take you up on that offer," Kurapika said eventually.

Sasuke smiled. He'd seen it as a foregone conclusion, of course, but it was still a confirmation that marked the official start of what he was sure would be a beautiful partnership.


	7. Chapter 6: Seeing Red

**[Chapter 6]**

**A/N: Sorry about such a long wait, guys. Writing the fight scene in this one was like pulling teeth, and I'm still not totally happy with it, but I'd rather get it out of the way than have it keep postponing the important stuff longer.**

**A kago is like a carriage, except it's carried by people instead of having wheels and being drawn by a horse. They were used primarily for the transport of nobles and members of the warrior class, as Japan's human population had grown large enough to preclude setting land aside to raise horses for non-military purposes. Gaara travels in a kago at least once in Shippuden.**

**Additionally, I would like to thank Seventh Sanctum for its Evil-Sounding Name Generator and its surprisingly not-too-evil-sounding results. The OCs in this chapter would all be nameless goons without it. Since it **_**is**_** a random generator, though, please let me know if any of the names I chose actually mean something bad in some language, so I can change it.**

**Warning: Kabuto and Orochimaru are still with the transfail in this chapter. I know that gendered third-person pronouns aren't really a thing in Japanese, which is the language the characters are at least nominally supposed to be speaking in, but _if_ they were speaking English, they'd be using the wrong pronouns, and Translation Convention. I'm going to try and keep that just to characters who have definitively misgendered Kurapika, though; I'll be having characters who aren't quite sure and/or don't really care defaulting to "he".**

"Hey, Kurapika," Sasuke said, knocking on the locked door with his free hand. An armful of scrolls was somewhat precariously held against his chest with his other arm. "Can I come in?"

There was a pause, then, "Go ahead."

Sasuke unlocked the door – with the key, this time – and opened it. "This was the best I could do."

Kurapika smiled from his spot sitting on the floor, and wiped some sweat from his brow with his sleeve. "Thanks."

"Been training?" Sasuke asked rhetorically. He got a nod. "You should start packing up your things."

Kurapika looked surprised. "Why? Are we going somewhere?"

"Orochimaru insists on changing hideouts every week," Sasuke said as he walked towards the neatly-made bed. He set down the scrolls, then righted himself and looked back towards Kurapika. His eyes lingered a fraction of a second too long on the sweat-slicked locks of hair clinging to Kurapika's neck before lifting his gaze to make eye contact. "We're leaving tomorrow morning."

Thankfully, Kurapika either didn't notice the (admittedly minute) slip-up, or he didn't want to confront Sasuke about it, because he just smiled and said, "Thanks for letting me know."

Sasuke returned the smile. "When it's time to leave, I'll come get you." He paused, unsure of whether or not to ask the question on his mind. "Do you. . . have any plans for today?"

"Not really."

"I could use a sparring partner." It was a mostly-true excuse for them to spend time together. Finding a fellow survivor, a kindred spirit who truly understood, who _shared_ the pain and hatred he felt every moment of every day, had awakened the realisation in Sasuke of just how lonely an existence he'd been leading up to that point.

Maybe Kurapika was lonely, too, because his cerulean eyes immediately brightened and he got to his feet with a smile. "Alright. Same training field as before?"

It didn't take long for them to strike a balance between their strengths when sparring. They didn't need to talk it over; they both already knew that Sasuke was too fast and Kurapika was too strong for sparring to really work if they both gave it their all, so it just happened. Sasuke slowed down nearly to Kurapika's pace, and Kurapika pulled his punches down to only slightly above what Sasuke could pack. Everything, then, came down to technique and skill, which they both had a lot of, when it came down to it.

"You go for the face a lot," Sasuke observed several minutes in, leaning back to just barely dodge Kurapika's foot as it swept past him. "Is that something you normally do, or are you just jealous of my good looks?"

"Why would I need to be jealous?" Kurapika asked back as way of answer, following up the kick with an elbow jab.

"Touché." Sasuke dodged to the side, but then grabbed Kurapika by the crook of the arm and started to turn in order to get leverage for a throw. Kurapika deliberately let his footing slip as he got dragged along with the movement, hooked one foot around Sasuke's ankle, and pulled. A victim of his own momentum, Sasuke wasn't able to catch himself in time, and fell backwards onto Kurapika, who immediately rolled them both over so he had Sasuke in a pin.

"Do I win this round?" Kurapika asked, leaning his other elbow firmly between Sasuke's shoulder blades.

"Yeah. . ." he conceded grudgingly. "I'll get you next time, though."

Three hours later, the both of them were equally dirty, battered, and exhausted. Without the added variables of their powers or respective unfair advantages, they were fairly evenly matched in raw martial arts skill.

"Don't bother," Sasuke said as he noticed Kurapika summoning the Holy Chain. "We have Kabuto around for a reason."

The chain vanished as quickly as it had come. They were both silent for a moment before Kurapika spoke. ". . . This means walking, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. . . . Yeah, it does." With a groan, Sasuke dragged himself to his feet, and offered Kurapika a hand up. "C'mon. It's not too far."

Indeed, the infirmary had been intentionally placed quite close to the training field. Kabuto gave them both an exasperated look as he took note of their sorry state. "Do I want to know?"

"Sparring," was the only token of explanation Sasuke offered. "Patch Kurapika up first."

"But –" Kurapika started to protest, but fell silent when Sasuke gave him a meaningful look. This was the only way to guarantee that Kabuto would treat him at all. ". . . Alright."

Kabuto sighed, and adjusted his glasses as he picked up a clip board. "Please take a seat over there," he said, indicating the examination table.

"While I'm glad you're giving yourselves a challenge, try to run each other a little less ragged next time, okay?" Kabuto said as he ushered the two teens – now only dirty and exhausted – out the door. "Now both of you get back to your rooms and _rest._"

"Yeah, yeah. . ." Sasuke muttered. He still went out of his way to walk Kurapika back to his room – not that he was _worried_ or feeling protective or anything; he was just. . . well, he was worried that Kurapika might run into some of Orochimaru's more belligerent minions, and was feeling protective of his newfound friend – before returning to his own, locking the door, and promptly collapsing on the bed in a dead faint.

The next day, Sasuke knocked lightly on Kurapika's door. "You dressed?"

"Almost," Kurapika called back. There was a pause of a few seconds. "Okay. You can come in."

Sasuke unlocked the door and let it swing open. Kurapika was dressed in a pair of white trousers from the closet, one of his own dark undershirts, and his sleeveless white V-neck. He was still pulling on a third shirt with long sleeves.

By comparison, Sasuke was wearing relatively little: the only not-strictly-necessary pieces of clothing he had on were his wrist guards and the blue cloth under his rope belt. Well, and his open white yukata top, which really was optional. The level two form of his Cursed Seal didn't exactly lend itself toward prioritising modesty. "You really need that many layers?"

"Yes," Kurapika answered without hesitation, and started putting on his tunic.

Curiosity unsatisfied and no elaboration apparently forthcoming, Sasuke decided to prod further. "Do you get cold easily?" It seemed somewhat plausible to him that someone whose bloodline limit seemed so fiery might have a poor tolerance for low temperatures.

"No," Kurapika said, expertly tying the bow at his neck by touch rather than needing a mirror, "but these are the traditional clothes of my clan."

He didn't need to say more. Sasuke understood. It was the same reason why every shirt of his had the clan symbol on the back, and why he'd been reluctant to give up wide, high collars; it was part of their identities, and giving it up would mean giving up on their clans' memory.

"I'll see about getting you fabric and supplies to make more," Sasuke said, noting that the tunic was rather dusty. "Are you packed?"

Kurapika nodded as he picked up his messenger bag and ducked under the strap. He glanced over Sasuke and noticed a distinct lack of any bags or suitcases. "What about you?"

Sasuke pulled a scroll from his belt. "It's all in here." He paused in thought. "You know, you _might_ be able to do scroll storage. It's all just applying enough chakra to trigger the seals."

"Do we have time to try?" Kurapika asked.

"Sasuke, hurry up!" Kabuto's voice rang down the hall. "We were supposed to be leaving five minutes ago!"

"I guess that's a 'no'," Kurapika said with a frown, giving Sasuke a look that spoke volumes of his disappointment in the other young man's time management skills.

"Okay, so I slept through my alarm _once,_" Sasuke said defensively. He turned and started walking down the hall. "C'mon."

Once they got outside, Kabuto immediately approached them. "Lord Orochimaru wishes to speak to you."

"Fine," Sasuke said. He motioned to the smaller of the two kago in the convoy. "Kurapika, that's the one we'll be riding in, so you go on ahead. I'll -"

"_Both_ of you," Kabuto clarified with a smile that gave Kurapika cold chills.

The three of them made their way to the larger kago, and a servant opened the door to let them in. A ghastly-pale, willowy man with heavily discoloured hands sat on an opulent couch across from a much more paltry wooden bench. Golden eyes with slitted pupils turned to Kurapika appraisingly.

"So. . . you're the one Sasuke's been paying so much attention to. . ." the man – who Kurapika could only assume was Orochimaru – said. "Sit down."

Sasuke sat down on the bench, and Kurapika followed suit. Kabuto signalled to the servant before taking a seat on the other side of Sasuke, and the door closed. A few seconds later, the kago was lifted up off the ground, and it – presumably along with the rest of the convoy – started moving.

"What do you think of Sasuke?" Orochimaru asked. "I hear the two of you really did a number on each other yesterday."

Kurapika chose his words carefully. "He's very skilled. However, I'm not familiar enough with what the baseline for this world is to make a judgement regarding his physical strength."

"I left baseline in the dust a long time ago," Sasuke huffed.

"And how is he compared to _your_ world's baseline?" Orochimaru prodded.

"Hmmm. . ." Kurapika pondered that question for a bit. "Well, he's clearly above and beyond normal people with no training, but. . ." He glanced over at Sasuke. "How much weight can you push?"

"I can bench-press 117.3 kilos," Sasuke said.

That made Kurapika do a double-take. "Wait, only that much?"

Sasuke gave him a sidelong glare. "What do you mean 'only'?"

"Well, I knew that you were somewhat weaker physically, but that's less than a tenth of what I was expecting."

Now it was Sasuke's turn to look flabbergasted. ". . . Y-you're kidding, right?"

"Why would I be kidding?" Kurapika asked, confusion clearly giving away his sincerity. "Even without nen, a stringent enough weight training regimen can get someone our age strong enough to move a few tons."

"Ku ku ku. . ." Orochimaru chuckled, already planning ways he could use this to his advantage. He'd definitely want to start recruiting from the other side of the rift as soon as possible. "Your world sounds interesting."

"Although I haven't seen much of it yet, your world seems very interesting to me as well," Kurapika replied politely, although he was getting chills down his spine similar to, but worse than, the ones he felt when talking to Kabuto.

The conversation descended into smalltalk – very careful smalltalk on Kurapika's part, but still smalltalk – for a while, then silence. However, the silence didn't last very long.

Kurapika was the first to notice it. "Two people with nen are approaching from my right and a bit ahead of us."

Instantly, the atmosphere in the kago grew tense.

"How far?" Kabuto asked, adjusting his glasses and reaching for his curved kunai.

"About twenty metres, but closing fas-"

There was a scream from outside, and the kago suddenly lurched toward one corner.

Sasuke and Kurapika both stood simultaneously. "I'll handle this." Other than their using different "I"s ("ore" and "watashi" respectively), they spoke and then gave each other disapproving looks in almost perfect unison.

"I'll be fine on my own," Sasuke said, and pushed past Kurapika to the door. He kicked it open and jumped out.

Despite Sasuke's declaration, Kurapika hopped down right behind him.

"I _said_ that I'll be fine on my own," Sasuke growled as he dodged out of the way of a nen-imbued dart, and threw a kunai in the direction it came from. "Get back inside."

"They're probably here for me," Kurapika said. "I can't in good faith leave it to someone else."

"Hmm? It sounds like someone's confused," a voice mused. A large, hulking man stepped out into view. He caught the shuriken Sasuke threw at his face in his bare hand. "Probably Uian's fault; the sleazy bastard always was good at scaring people." Giant fingers tightened around the shuriken's bladed edges without bleeding, and the metal buckled, then crushed. He opened his hand, and a long, thin sliver of twisted metal was all that was left of the weapon. "You're Kurapika, right? My name's Lancami. I'm a two-star Living Relic Hunter. You should come with me."

"He's not going anywhere with you," Sasuke said, drawing his chokutou.

Dark grey eyes narrowed. "Are you going to stop him?"

"I'm going to stop you."

Lancami sighed. "I was afraid you were going to say that." He flicked the crumpled shuriken at Sasuke point-first.

It was an easy shot for Sasuke to follow with his eyes, and he leaned out of the way with almost no effort.

The projectile didn't so much strike the tree behind him as it obliterated it.

Sasuke glanced back at the damage in surprise, then had to jump back quickly to avoid a punch as Lancami closed the distance between them in an instant. Almost immediately, Kurapika put himself between the two of them, eyes aglow and Dowsing Chain at the ready.

After meeting Kurapika's defiant, unafraid gaze for a moment, Lancami relaxed his stance slightly. "You're using yourself as a shield for him, even after seeing what I can do? I know you're not a Reinforcement type."

"And _I_ know that your goal is to capture me relatively unharmed," Kurapika replied. "You won't actually attack me with your full strength."

"Capture?" Lancami's bushy brown eyebrows shot up. "Oh, no, no," he said in what was probably supposed to be a soothing voice. "My plan from the start has been to persuade you to come with me _willingly._"

The half-truth in that statement didn't escape Kurapika's notice. Unswayed, but willing to stall while Sasuke engaged the dart-throwing woman who'd finished scattering or disabling the less capable Sound-nin who weren't just clustering defensively around the kago, Kurapika pretended to be curious. "And why would I want to do that?"

With all the practiced enthusiasm of someone who'd delivered his sales pitch many times before, Lancami started talking. "Well, for one, our facilities don't use nen- or drug-based control tactics like a lot of other Living Relic Hunters do. You'll be as lucid and free-willed as you are now. For two, there's the benefits. You'll live in a five-star luxury suite with waiting staff. All of your meals will be prepared by a world-class chef. Each of our facilities has a live-in doctor and psychiatrist, both of whom specialise in working with exotic human subspecies. You will also have access to an indoor pool and exercise rooms with trainers, an ebook library with a selection in the tens of millions, and a rec center for playing games and socialising with your fellow guests. All of our staff have passed the five most extensive background checks in the world, and every measure will be taken to ensure your safety. Additionally, you are entitled to a 20% cut of all profits made by your attendance of events, fund raisers, and other functions."

Kurapika's brow furrowed in disapproval. "You plan to rent me out."

"Only if you choose to do so," Lancami said. "In your case, all you'd have to do is stand there, look pretty, and let the Scarlet Eyes do the rest."

That did it. The thin veneer of composure Kurapika had been clinging to snapped. He grit his teeth in anger, and his next words were a low growl. "I'm just a decoration to you. . . ."

Lancami frowned. "Well, not _just_ a decoration, but –"

"NO!" Kurapika shouted. "I'm not going with someone like you." He tilted his wrist, and was about to unleash the full force of the Dowsing chain. . .

The dart-throwing woman slumped to the ground, and Sasuke returned his attention to Lancami. "Kurapika, get back."

"But –"

Sasuke finished his seals and inhaled. "_Katon_ –"

Not wanting to get caught in the resulting fireball, Kurapika had no choice but to move out of the way quickly. Unfortunately, almost as soon as he realised what it was, Lancami charged right through the heart of it, searing his hair and clothes but suffering only minor burns as he made a swing for Sasuke's throat. This time, Sasuke didn't have quite enough time to react.

A sickening crunch cut through the sudden silence. Leaves settled. For a fleeting instant, everyone was still as they tried to process what had just happened.

Kurapika's forearms were already starting to swell and bruise from the shattered bones within them as he stood between Lancami and Sasuke. Lancami's eyes were wide as he started pulling his punch a millisecond too late. The stream of fire from Sasuke's mouth ceased as he breathlessly realised what Kurapika was doing.

Then, that moment ended, and everything was in motion again. Sasuke regained his bearings a half-blink before Lancami did, and that was more than enough time to form his chakra into a Chidori blade and stab it between the vital structures in Kurapika's chest to get a surprise attack into the Living Relic Hunter's throat.

When he dematerialised it, both Lancami's corpse and Kurapika slumped down, unable to bear their own weights. While Lancami hit the ground unceremoniously, Sasuke caught Kurapika in his arms and hastily spirited him back to the kago. "Kabuto, heal him."

"You could have said 'please'," Kabuto sighed, but simultaneously hurried to mend the bleeding in Kurapika's chest cavity. He smiled slightly as the blond's breathing began to sound less pained, and glanced back towards Sasuke. "You know, it's really irresponsible to do something like that to. . . him. He could have died."

Sasuke gave a snort of disgust. "Don't insult me like that. I know anatomy well enough to intentionally miss someone's vitals, and I knew you were right here to heal him afterward. He wasn't ever in any danger."

"While that's true," Kurapika whispered, still trying not to breathe too deeply, "I'd prefer if you try to stab _around_ rather than through me in the future, if at all possible."

"I'll try," Sasuke said. He paused, then added, "Thanks for saving me back there."

"No problem." One corner of Kurapika's mouth quirked up. "Besides, how could I live with myself if I knew you'd been turned into a bloody smear on the ground because of me?"

Quite the laugh crawled its way out of Orochimaru's throat at that. "Magnificent. . . ."

Between Kabuto's healing abilities and Kurapika's Holy Chain, mending the damage from the fight proved trivial. When they were done, Kabuto looked back at Sasuke. "You should get him back to your kago to lie down and change out of those blood-spattered clothes."

"Blood?" Kurapika's eyes widened slightly. Memories of killing Ubogin flooded his mind, and his eyes, which had returned to blue while he was being healed, became red again as he reached up to feel his face. His fingers came away wet and sticky with partially-congealed blood. He'd been so caught up in the adrenaline of having to save Sasuke, and then of the fact he'd been stabbed, that he hadn't even noticed the spray of Lancami's wound at the time. Now, however, he found he couldn't take his eyes off it.

Then, suddenly, everything went dark, and all he could see was the light from his own corneas. He jerked upwards reflexively, but met resistance on the upper half of his face.

"Kurapika?" Sasuke's concerned voice cut through the red haze of confusion and mounting panic, and Kurapika realised belatedly that Sasuke had covered his eyes with one hand.

"What was that for?" Kurapika complained as he tugged Sasuke's hand away with his own free one. He vaguely noticed that Sasuke was also holding his other wrist down, but he couldn't fathom why.

"Calling your name and shaking you wasn't working," Kabuto said with an entirely too pleasant smile.

"Oh. . ." Kurapika's brow furrowed with worry. "Um. . . can I have my hand back?"

For once, Sasuke deferred to Kabuto, giving him a questioning look. The medic shook his head, then turned slightly to address Kurapika.

"Not yet. It would probably be best if you closed your eyes for a bit," he said in his best soothing voice. Once Kurapika obeyed, he pushed up Kurapika's sleeve and splashed a little rubbing alcohol on the inside of his elbow. Then, he filled a syringe from a small vial. "Now, you're going to feel a small pinch, but this should help you calm down."

The injection went smoothly, and, within seconds, Sasuke saw Kurapika's aura return to normal, accompanied by a slight easing of the shoulders. Kabuto then quickly wiped the blood droplets from Kurapika's face and hands with a damp cloth, and started to pack things back into his first aid kit.

"Alright. I trust you can take care of the rest, Sasuke," Kabuto said.

Sasuke nodded, and carefully picked Kurapika back up again. He took the distinct lack of protest as a sign that whatever Kabuto had given him was working. There was a slight displacement of air, and, in half the time it would take to blink, they'd both vanished off.

"You weren't exaggerating about the beauty of those eyes," Orochimaru murmured once he was sure the two had gone, "but I think you underestimated her potential value as a combat tool."

"I think I underestimated it, too. . ." Kabuto agreed.


	8. Chapter 7: Mind and Body

**[Chapter 7: Mind and Body]**

**PSA: I _in absolutely no way_ wish to encourage anyone real to stop taking any medication prescribed to them by a qualified doctor in appropriate dosages. _Kabuto_ is the problem here, not the medication.**

Just as the sedative was starting to wear off, there was a knock on the kago door.

"What is it?" Sasuke asked.

The door opened and Kabuto stepped in, carrying a bottle of water. "Just checking up on you two before we get going again." He turned to smile at Kurapika. "How are you feeling? That was quite the scare you gave us earlier."

Kurapika shifted uneasily. "I. . . I'm okay, now."

"Good." He pressed a small red capsule into Kurapika's hand. "You should take this."

Kurapika glanced down at the pill, then warily back up and Kabuto. "What does it do?"

"Just something to soothe your nerves a bit." Kabuto offered him the water bottle.

"He said he's okay now," Sasuke cut in. "You don't need to medicate him for an episode of something that's already passed."

Kabuto pushed his glasses up as he turned to regard Sasuke with an icy, cheerful smile. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, Sasuke. Don't you agree, Kurapika?"

The question was met with silence, but Kurapika still made his answer clear: He looked away, and extended the hand holding the pill back out towards Kabuto.

"Oh, don't let Sasuke scare you off from taking it," Kabuto said sweetly. "This is just a stopgap measure until we can get somewhere I can do a proper evaluation. You want help for those 'episodes', don't you?"

Kurapika's gaze snapped back up to lock with Kabuto's again. "You could make them go away?"

"I'll do my best to," Kabuto replied with surprising sincerity. "We might have to try a few medications before we find one that works well."

There were several seconds of silence before Kurapika gave his response. ". . . What's the catch?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," Kabuto lied, smile not wavering for a moment.

"Really?" Sasuke asked. "Because I can think of a few off the top of my head. First of all, it would make him dependent on you to keep supplying his medication. Going cold turkey on some kinds of psychoactive medicines can cause really bad withdrawal symptoms, so you'd be able to extort things out of him by threatening to withhold them. Secondly, it would also require him to trust that not only does what you're giving him do what you say it does, but that it doesn't do things you haven't mentioned, and that you haven't switched it with something else that looks the same."

"I'm afraid I'll have to decline your offer, Mr. Kabuto," Kurapika said softly. He moved his hand slightly closer to Kabuto, but when the other man did not take back the pill, he simply let the tablet fall.

Kabuto's hand darted out to catch it on reflex. "Should you reconsider, you know where to find me." He turned and left, his apparent calm belied only by the forcedness of his smile.

"Sorry about that," Sasuke said once Kabuto was out of earshot.

"What are you apologising for?" Kurapika asked. "I know Kabuto doesn't have my best interests in mind. But. . . I do know someone who does, and is going to school to become a doctor. Maybe someday I'll ask him about it. . . ."

"Do you. . . remember what you saw?" Sasuke asked, choosing his words carefully.

"Memories, mostly," Kurapika said softly, looking at this hands with red eyes. "The first Spider I killed. I hadn't ever killed someone before, and he couldn't move or use his nen, so I thought it would be easy enough to just do it with my fists, but. . . I hadn't thought about the blood."

This resolutely confirmed something Sasuke had suspected from day one: Although Kurapika could and would kill if he had to, it completely went against his nature, and came at the cost of great emotional distress. In contrast, while Sasuke himself usually found unnecessary killing distasteful, it wasn't something he lost sleep over.

"Perhaps it would be best if I did all the actual killing from now on," Sasuke suggested.

Kurapika's eyes widened. "No! I couldn't ask you to do something like that! I. . ." He looked away. "You shouldn't have to shoulder that guilt alone."

"Kurapika, it's okay," Sasuke said. "I'm a ninja. Ninjas kill. It isn't fun, but it's not as big a deal to me as it is to you."

Silence reigned for a long time as Kurapika pondered, but, eventually, he answered: "Alright. . . ." He paused almost long enough for Sasuke to think that the discussion was over before continuing, "but if you're going to be my sword, then you at least have to let me be your shield."

"What?" That was when Sasuke decided that he knew what to make of that odd poetic bent Kurapika's speech sometimes took: He didn't like it, and the meaning wasn't clear.

"Even though you might be sturdy by ninja standards, against a nen-user, you're a glass cannon."

Sasuke gave him a blank stare. "And a cannon is. . .?"

"Hm?" Kurapika blinked. "Oh, it's an artillery piece that uses gunpowder." He paused half a second before adding "And an artillery piece is a gun that is too big to be used as a personal weapon; they're usually mounted on wheeled platforms or turrets. They were first invented to break through fortifications, but now they're transportable enough to be deployed against almost anything someone might want to turn into a crater."

". . . So, when you say that I'm a 'glass cannon', you mean that I can't take what I dish out."

"More-or-less. You're capable of causing a large amount of damage, but you're also comparatively fragile, and will go down in a couple hits."

The word "fragile" raised Sasuke's hackles. That was never a word he wanted applied to himself, ever. "So I won't let them hit me."

"So I didn't need to put myself in the way of that punch that would have taken your head clean off if it had hit?" Kurapika asked. "You were going to easily dodge that?"

Sasuke opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it. After he failed for a few seconds to formulate a verbal response, Kurapika spoke up again:

"Keeping you alive furthers both our goals," he said, a tiny upward quirk of his lips belied by the gravity of his words. "If, to that end, I must use myself to block attacks that would kill you, that's fine. It isn't fun, but they're not as big a deal to me as it is to you."

Somehow, Kurapika turning his words back on him wasn't anywhere near as annoying as it was when Kabuto did the same thing. Nonetheless, it took great effort for Sasuke to swallow his pride and concede. ". . . Fine. We'll start training tomorrow. But I swear, one day, I _will_ find a way to surpass you."

"I hope you do," Kurapika said, softly and sincerely.

An awkward silence followed, which eventually turned into just silence. Kurapika read one of the scrolls Sasuke had gotten for him, and Sasuke silently contemplated the new arrangement they had entered. If it was termed as him having volunteered to protect Kurapika's mind from unnecessary harm, then it wasn't quite so upsetting to think that Kurapika would in turn volunteer to protect Sasuke's body from the same. Even so, the very idea of needing outside protection made Sasuke's skin crawl.

He glanced up at Kurapika for a moment. The other young man's shoulders were tense, his back nearly as straight as when they'd been speaking with Orochimaru, and the hand resting in his lap was white-knuckled.

That skin-crawling feeling was clearly yet another thing they both shared. Thoughts of their similarities and differences swirled about Sasuke's brain, rubbing together and sparking off showers of questions: Was it fair, to want to spare Kurapika the pain of killing when it would also mean taking away the chance for Kurapika to avenge his clan with his own hands? Sasuke knew that he'd hate to have someone else kill Itachi for him, but was that different, since he'd been raised from childhood knowing that he was being taught how to hurt and kill, while Kurapika hadn't had any combat training at all until after his clan died? How much did that broken layer of innocence that Sasuke had never had in the first place really mean? Did the severity of Kurapika's reaction to being reminded of his first kill justify taking that responsibility – they both knew that destroying the Spider was not a _choice_ any more than killing Itachi was – away from him even if the differences in their upbringings were irrelevant? And if it did. . . did Sasuke have the right to? He knew that in some ways Kurapika was in even more pain than he was; his first instinct had been to try to protect him because of that, but now that he thought about it, didn't that make him just like Naruto, trying to forcefully meddle with the life of someone he only partially understood? Why did he even want so badly to take that away from Kurapika in the first place?

Kurapika, meanwhile, had been reading the same line over and over again for the past two minutes, mind too focused on other things to properly process its meaning.

Even from their first encounter, he had noticed that Sasuke was pushy and used to getting his way. Sasuke was friendly enough, and obviously cared about Kurapika's health, but for all his talk about being a team, he still acted like he really wanted to remain on his own. Worse, now he was trying to co-opt rather than help with Kurapika's revenge. Killing the Spider was a sin that should stay just on _his_ soul, not Sasuke's, but he had no idea how to express that without potentially causing offense; after all, Sasuke was a ninja, and ninjas kill.

Despite everything wrong, however, Kurapika still liked Sasuke, and wanted to help him. He knew that sacrificing his own physical wellbeing was nothing compared to the sins Sasuke was so effortlessly willing to commit for him, but he couldn't think of any better way to repay him.


End file.
